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Peter Bogdanovich Retrospective

D1JGB3 At Long Last Love -- Szenenbild --

Photograph from United Archives GmbH / Alamy

Peter Bogdanovich, whose new documentary about Buster Keaton opens on Oct. 5, is the subject of a retrospective at the Quad (Sept. 28-Oct. 5), which offers a major revelation: Bogdanovich’s 1975 musical, “At Long Last Love,” which was cruelly derided upon its release but is an overlooked masterwork. Set in 1935, in a high-style New York decked out in silver and white, it’s a comedic tale of two couples—an heiress (Cybill Shepherd) and a gambler (Duilio Del Prete), an actress (Madeline Kahn) and an heir (Burt Reynolds)—who meet cute and then change partners. The movie is filled with Cole Porter songs performed in giddy and daring long takes that, for all their refined cinematic artifice, are also virtual documentaries of the cast’s theatrical prowess. The joyfully strutting and swinging production numbers do most of the storytelling, which balances deft and brash comedy with painful jolts of bittersweet, worldly romanticism.